Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld

Teho Teardo lives in Rome and is a musician, composer and sound designer. He created the soundtracks for several movies by Oscar winning directors Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriele Salvatores. He won various prizes for his music, such as the Ennio Morricone and David Di Donatello Prizes. www.tehoteardo.com 

Blixa Bargeld was born in 1959 in West Berlin. He is an autodidact and works as a singer, writer, composer and director. He was the guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for more than 10 years and is Head and Founder of Einstürzende Neubauten since 1980. Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten will release a new album in May 2020 with a concert tour of Europe and North America. www.blixa-bargeld.com

Three years after their debut album Still Smiling, Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld returned with a completely new work. Often the nature of a collaboration is framed within a single episode limited in time, but this is not the case here. As a result of a special artistic and personal bond, Teho and Blixa reinvent their relationship to explore new territories.

Nerissimo is the title of this album. Its cover artwork was inspired by a painting from Hans Holbein the Younger titled The Ambassadors (1533). Embedded in the painting are enigmatic references to philosophy, religion, mortality, and illusion, which connect to some of the themes in the album. The word “nerissimo” is the Italian superlative for black (“the blackest”) and there is something very black about the music on this record. However that doesn’t mean, that it is “dark”—a genre commonly referred to in music. The colour black contains all colours and the music contains a multitude of possibilities. The title song Nerissimo opens the album in its English version and closes it with the Italian version, bracketing the album like bookends.